Of Strange Character
by Owlee
Summary: Just a bit of a dump for all my character studies. Will vary time/character/topic. More substantial ones will be given their own story. Read if you're curious on my thoughts about the characters. M for no worries.
1. Hermione: The Good Race

Hermione watched the two boys grow up in such separate ways, yet remained friends.

Ron, still so naïve about everything, who feels so left behind and ignored, but who will put this behind in times of crisis, because he loves Harry like a brother.

Harry, so emotionally stunted, but so loyal and so willing. His fifth year was his worst, but he took the knowledge from it and grew into a man Hermione could admire.

They were both her best friends. She loved both of them so equally.

And like many would in her situation, she began to gain romantic feelings for them both. Harry's glances seemed to suggest more, Ron's fights seemed to contain a certain type of tension.

And Hermione knew she wouldn't be able to choose.

Harry understood less about emotions than Ron who was merely oblivious. Two separate types of ignorance, she supposed. Self inflicted and that caused by others.

So despite Harry's intuitiveness toward the feeling that something was different, he didn't know the words to what it was.

And so Ron won the race.

And Harry found Ginny almost everything Hermione could have been.

But only Hermione knew that.


	2. Petunia: Almost Lily

Lily's eyes were barely visible in the small, narrow eyes.

Her slender frame abnormally stretched to heights beyond what it should.

He delicate features made harsh and cruel on a to thin face.

Her hair, a strawberry blonde, paled against the vibrant red of Lily.

She was always almost Lily, but never quite so.

Is it a wonder she could hate the son of the girl who taunted her for her flaws by simply existing?

The girl who had overshadowed her until she was little more than a starving tree in the shade of a great, elegant oak.

Perhaps she was petty, held on to her anger too long.

Let it blind her to what her heart had always known.

While most of her was merely almost Lily, a small place in her heart contained a piece of Lily so refined and pure, but now took its turn at being overshadowed. This time by the sheer weight of her envy.

But it was in this spot where her nephew resided, the very reason she let him in.

Not even Petunia knows her biggest secret.

But she would always love Harry Potter.

Her sister's son.


	3. Severus: Forgotten Son

"He loved you like a son", Harry said softly to a dying Snape.

Snape gave a dark chuckle, "Yes, but you were the chosen one and the favoured son".

He closed his eyes for the last time and whispered his last words.

"And I, his sacrificial lamb and forgotten son."


	4. Sirius: Victims of Circumstance

Sirius did not wish to remember his childhood as he trained to be an auror and an Order member.

In truth, he never wished to remember it at all. He learned dark magic by being on the other side of it, it was how he learned his manners too. His mother always so cold, his father barely there.

But as he trained to kill those like them, this was not why he wished he couldn't remember.

He wished he couldn't remember the wild, happy laugh of his cousin Bella, before Rodolphus had broken her.

Wished he didn't remember the sly smiles of Lucius Malfoy as he lied to protect him from his mother when he had broken her vase.

Wished he couldn't recall Narcissa finding him crying and comforting him as he recovered from his first taste of the Cruciatus.

But above all else, he wished he didn't remember his little brother's wide, gray eyes, looking at him with love as he protected him from their parents.

He knew if James hadn't come along, if he had a slight bit less courage, if he had listened to his mother and sat with Bella and Cissy that day.

He would be just like them.

They were just victims of circumstance.

Faultless, in a way.

And Sirius wished like hell that he didn't remember that.


	5. Bellatrix: Insanity Must Begin Somewhere

Long, black, silky curls fade into mad, violent tresses.

Cold, amused, grey eyes fade into lifeless, insane, wild ones.

Happy, young, wild laughs fade into hysterical, childish peals.

Elegant, graceful, delicate features fade into pale, sunken cheek bones.

Bellatrix Black was far from insane, the beautiful, oldest daughter of a branch of the Blacks. The most coveted girl by the families for an arranged marriage. She was the wet dream of many Hogwart's boys, her cool demeanor paired with the delicious laughter you got to hear if you were just close enough.

She was a young girl, uninhibited. Bound by a contract in the distant future, but still distant enough to ignore. She was strong and powerful and, while she didn't know of as many spells as Cissy did, she could cast any curse she wished.

She was the quintessential, pure blood girl.

Bellatrix Lestrange was madder than a hatter. The girl had been broken, leaving behind a lifeless husk. Rodolphus spared her no mercy as he demanded her obedience and forced it from her when she wouldn't give it. Her strength was lost.

So was it any wonder when the Dark Lord appeared, prepared to offer her all her old strength and more that she didn't refuse?

He returned her the stolen power, but he couldn't un-break her. The Dark Lord didn't encompass the love to do so.

Her mind broken and her power at full force, she was the terrifying ghost of the girl she once was. And she had Lord Voldemort to thank for her return.

So she became his most loyal follower, she would follow him to the end. She bared his pain as love for her, to help her correct her flaws to become as flawless as him.

And when he rescued her from Azkaban, she felt her love cement even more.

A broken soul that latched so tight, it healed with the other's soul between it.

Too bad the Dark Lord no longer had his soul.


	6. Tom: Last Flaw

Tom stared in disgust at the dark, red filth that covered his cloak.

It was this that stood in his way to power, this vile substance.

If someone else had come along they may of stared at him with fear or perhaps with a strange awe at disturbing,yet beautiful sight of this man.

But,not Tom. For Tom, no matter how many he invoked fear and terror on, no matter how much power he had, as long as he had this sickening weakness he was no more than a little orphan bastard, hoping that wishes were horses.

He had studied every ritual, looked into every creature and artifact. But in the end they all caused him a greater weakness than the one his was giving up.

So this was his last chance. His last desperate move. How sad that his final move of the chess piece was so reliant on someone as pitiful as Slughorn.

But Tom would never take the power that was so rightfully his so long as he held this shred of humanity in him.

He stared at the glinting knife, covered in the red liquid.

His own mortality would be the last flaw he'd eradicate.


	7. Andromeda: Exactly Their Time

"'Oh, I am so sorry for your loss. They were taken before their time.'

"Who are you to decide that? Decide this was not their time to go. If there is a god, i doubt you are him, and if there isn't it is still not your choice that it was not right for them to be taken.

"My daughter and son-in-law were heroes. They chose to give their lives in order for you to keep yours. They were warriors and soldiers and chose to put themselves out there on that battlefield, knowing their age, knowing they had their whole lives ahead of them, while you cowered in your bed sheets.

"It was exactly their time to go. It was exactly the right way for ones so brave and loyal as them to be taken. They may have had their lives before them, they may have just given birth to their child, but without them we would be in a much worse place.

"Never cheapen their deaths by saying the choice wasn't theirs. Do not take away their braveness and loyalty with your pathetic, unfeeling words. Not until you have placed yourself into that position may you present those words to me and tell me i was wrong.

"Dora and Remus were two of the strongest people I know. And they were taken at exactly the right time, no matter how those who miss them wish otherwise."


End file.
